Female Identity and Gender Equality during the Enlightenment
Moderate Enlightenment Thinker's Ideas on Female Identity
——Rousseau, Emile
As the Enlightenment thinkers started to theorize about humanity in general, gender became an unavoidable topic. As anatomical studies on the human bodies developed, understanding about the foundational physical constitution between men and women had already widely gained recognition. Because of the physiological makeup of the reproductive system of women, there were an “increasing stress on women’s unique fitness for the role of wife and mother” (Outram, 83). In the contrast, the anatomical studies that argued that women had a smaller brain size compared to men “demonstrated their unfitness for intellectual pursuits” (Outram, 82). The difference in biological construct thus further led to the contrast of social identity between women and men, as Rousseau suggests in Emile. The softness of women that came along their nature to bring up children were increasingly being considered as femininity and they were viewed as “social glue” because they were able to “correct that rudeness which passion and pride introduce into the company of men (Taylor, 82). "Their delicate hand smoothes the asperities of life” (Taylor, 82). Women were considered as the civilizer of men and guardian of the society. At the same time, women were also the consumer of the society. The luxury that they acquired “had been depicted as a quintessentially feminine vice, with critics from Cato to Augustine to Montesquieu loud in their denunciations of female extravagance and indulgence” (Taylor, 79).
While Voltaire could be considered as a representation of thinkers who agreed with the natural distinction between men and women, there were also radical Enlightenment thinker who “denounced misogyny barbaric and argued that traditional female vice —weakness, silliness, frivolity— were either male inventions or products of oppression” (Taylor, 83). Such radical thinking seemed to reconcile the central paradox in Enlightenment thinking about the inconsistent roles and ability of women. It also showed the rudiment of the modern gender equality thinking.
Radical Enlightenment Thinker's Thoughts on Gender Equality
In A Vindication of the Rights of the Women, written by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792, Wollstonecraft responded to the thoughts of some education theorists who didn’t think women should receive proper education. She argued that by giving women proper education, and imparticuarly, educating them together with males starting at a young age, would allow them to reason and fulfile their peculiar duties (Wollstonecraft). Unless women are more educated and “Wollstonecraft responded to the thoughts of some education theorists who didn’t think women should receive proper education. She argued that by giving women proper education, and in particular, educating them together with males starting at a young age, would allow them to reason and fulfill their peculiar duties better (Wollstonecraft). Until women are more educated and “have more understanding, it is vain to expect them to possess domestic taste. Their lively senses will ever be at work to harden their hearts, and the emotions struck out of them will continue to be vivid and transitory, unless a proper education store their mind with knowledge” (Wollstonecraft.) Wollstonecraft also indicated that both sexes would benefit from the education that women received, since “after women being brought up with men, they are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses” and are more capable of carrying out their domestic duties. By permitting boys and girls to pursue the same studies together, “the graceful decencies might early be inculcated which produce modesty without those sexual distinctions that taint the mind” (Wollstonecraft).
Wollstonecraft can be considered as a radical feminist during the Enlightenment. She rejected the gender role proposed by Rousseau and strongly promote the equality of men and women. However, because the larger social-historical context, such radical idea of coeducation would receive strong critiques and condemnation. She attempted to avoid this by compromising the education of girls after 9 years old to be separated from boys in the afternoon to be trained in “plain-work, mantua-making, millinery” (Wollstonecraft). However, it is undeniable that Wollstonecraft's theory contributed remarkably to the the rudimentary idea of gender equality in modern days.